Thinking that the police were waiting for him, a driver of a vehicle transporting a huge amount of illegal Zimbabwean cigarettes got himself stuck in a ditch.

Mr Jacques Bouwer of the Farm Watch told the Zoutpansberger of how they responded to an alleged attempted hi-jacking on the Beja Road on Friday afternoon, February 2. Three young men had overturned their vehicle on the road, claiming that a gun-wheeling man had jumped out in front of them in the road. In an effort to avoid him, they swerved out of the way, causing the vehicle to overturn. The man with the gun then "disappeared."

"We reached the scene just after 17:00. While there, we spotted a car approaching us at high speed. The car suddenly disappeared and after a while, wondering what had happened to it, we drove closer," says Mr Bouwer.

To Mr Bouwer’s surprise, the car they saw had ended up stuck in a ditch while trying to make a U-turn in the road. When the driver saw them approaching, he ran away. It was only later, and after finding hundreds of cartons of illegal cigarettes in the vehicle, that Mr Bouwer found out that this specific vehicle was one of three others being chased by the police at that very same time. When the suspect in the vehicle saw the Farm Watch’s green lights, he apparently thought they were the police and tried to make a run for it.

In total, members of the police confiscated some 1 600 cartons of illegal Zimbabwean cigarettes. This was after members of the police’s local Highway Patrol managed to stop a second vehicle and arrest a suspect. The third vehicle got away on the Witvlag Road.

According to Insp Ndwamato Vele, local police spokesperson, the value of the cigarettes is about R83 000. In the meantime, the captured suspect, Piaso Tauseni (34), was due to appear in court for a second time this week at the time of going to press.